“Planning is half the fun”, we hear. And it IS! But I implore you to understand that you really are doing it just for the fun of it. About one week in, most people’s “plans” are already ridiculous. Here’s the top 100 factors that make it that way: Blisters Gear failures Bus/shuttle schedules Post office […]

Having an innocent cockiness about how you are in life opens up many doors to new experiences. It also gets you into some predicaments. Mostly, it’s something I value about myself, that I identify a desire to do something, and just go ahead and do it, trusting I’ll adapt to it along the way. Last […]

Number of times I’ve nearly run over a pedestrian or into a car slamming on its brakes for a pedestrian: 74 Number of times as a pedestrian I’ve intentionally confused Portland drivers by crossing an intersection on a diagonal: 3 Number of times I’ve been nearly injured by a bicyclist both on foot or in […]

Long distance hiking adventure season is rolling to a close in the United States. The hikers whose blogs you’ve been following are just starting to arrive at their destinations and post photos of themselves at their respective terminus’ jumping into the air and crying and hugging the monument markers. They look skinny and […]

What if you could walk into a bare room that would be full of the next 20 most important people to enter your life and they would all be naked, without adornment, without any visual or contextual clues whatsoever as to who the hell these people are and where they have come from in life. […]

PORN: n. Media that is regarded as emphasizing the sensuous or sensational aspects of a nonsexual subject and stimulating a compulsive interest in their audience. (Dictionary.com) ~ or revised ~ PORN: n. Media Any media, object, person, or sheer mention of something that is regarded as emphasizing the sensuous or sensational aspects of a nonsexual subject and stimulating a […]

The thing about most dire situations is that you don’t realize they are dire until you’re standing smack in the center of the them. For example, when I left Kennedy Meadows to begin the Sierra segment of the Pacific Crest Trail last year, I was feeling a bit achy, a bit tired, and was having […]

Dollar store flip-flops are, well, a dollar. And every town with more than 35 people in it has a dollar store. What that means to me is that I have a somewhat destructible ultralight piece of gear that I can easily replace on a long distance hike without the expense and peskiness of having to […]

Thru-hikers are masochists. They have to be. What other personality trait could coerce them into thinking it’s actually preferable to spend 5 months more or less in a constant condition of suffering when they could, easily, instead choose to be cradled in a society wholly created to foster an illusion of non-stop comfort with bouts of occasional […]

“Dromomania, also traveling fugue, is an uncontrollable psychological urge to wander. People with this condition spontaneously depart from their routine, travel long distances and take up different identities and occupations. Months may pass before they return to their former identities.” Wikipedia “True dromomaniacs are obsessed with travel and are always planning their next trip or […]